Deborah Lynn SteinbergDepartment of Sociology, University of Warwick United Kingdom

Deborah Lynn Steinberg is a professor of gender, culture and media studies in the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick (UK) and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University (UK). Her books include: Bodies in Glass: Genetics, Eugenics, Embryo Ethics; Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief (with Adrian Kear) and Blairism and the War of Persuasion: Labour’s Passive Revolution (with Richard Johnson). She is currently producing a monograph: The Gene Between Biology and Culture.

Stuart J. MurrayRyerson University and University of Toronto Canada

Stuart J. Murray is Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of English at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He holds a concurrent appointment in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Editorial PrefaceSpecial Issue on Bioconvergence

Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Stuart J. Murray

Abstract

In the summer of 2009, we conceived a special issue of MediaTropes on the theme of “bioconvergence.” We sent out an initial circular to measure interest and solicited abstracts from scholars across disciplines. We received so many engaging and excellent contributions that we decided to publish two volumes of this special issue. Volume I appears here, while the publication of Volume II is anticipated in early 2012.

The contributions to this volume examine, from a range of angles, the ways in which living bodies, media, and technologies “converge.” The starting proposition of this special issue is that bodies are technologized and conceived increasingly in technical and biotechnological terms, while correspondingly, techniques and technologies have become increasingly “bodied.” Moreover, both tendencies are pointedly and pervasively mediatized as bodies and technologies constitute intercutting currents of spectacle and digitality in public and cultural life....